All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [43]
But the meal we enjoy most is the next day, and much simpler. We ride past silvery olive trees through the Calavon Valley, landing at a bistro in the tidy, picturesque hill town of Eygalières. There, under an outdoor grape arbor, we eat a tangy goat cheese melted on toast, niçoise pizza, runny chocolate cake, and a chilled pear soup. “Now, this,” says Charlotte, sighing, “is real Provençal food.”
When we start in on our first glass of wine, I realize that even though I am here in paradise, I have not felt entirely happy since the day I floated under the waterfall in Samoa. Our first course arrives, the wine warms our cheeks, and we gasp at the freshness of the flavors, so transporting that my eyes start to water.
“What is it?” Charlotte asks. I don’t want to tell her that I haven’t been myself lately and that this is the first time since then that I’ve started to feel a tingle, a deep, warm sense of everything being all right again. I forget about the power of food, friendship, and family to revive and comfort me. I don’t want to say all this out loud; to talk about my new sense of vulnerability would put too much of a burden on her, on the trip, and it’s something I want to forget entirely for the moment. Instead, I simply say how wonderful the meal is and how it reminds me of another meal I had a few years ago.
At home, I tell Charlotte, I keep a framed photo of myself clinking glasses with a friend at dinner. It’s not flattering: I look wan and worn out, with red-rimmed eyes, cheeks flushed. But the expression the camera caught is one of pure contentment. The photo was taken on May 8, 1997. I remember the date because on May 7, my husband left me. Up until dinner, May 8 was probably the worst day of my life. I spent most of it in bed, trying to grasp my new reality, that the man I had loved and married and planned to have children with had left me, abruptly, for someone else. I’d been lied to, cheated on, and abandoned, and I had a dinner reservation at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, the restaurant Alice Waters made famous for its local farm-to-table approach and simple presentation of exceptional ingredients.
Ironically, the dinner with my longtime friend Larry was payment for a bet I’d lost about which of us would get married first. We’d made the wager years before, when I’d thought I was too free-spirited to settle down, before I met the man who changed my mind. After I wed, Larry got married, too, and each of our lives got busier. Finally, our schedules coincided with a day we could get a reservation. That it turned out to be the day after my husband left me made me laugh at the universe in spite of my sadness.
When I told Larry the news, he asked if I wanted to cancel dinner. But I needed a reason to get out of bed, and that day, dinner at my favorite restaurant was the only one that would work. I might cry through every course, but I was going.
I met Larry at the entryway to the dark-wood Arts & Crafts building, greeted by a spray of wildflowers and a large bowl of fruit in season. We were seated in a cozy corner, with a view of the kitchen and its copper plates. We started with a glass of champagne and a plate of Hog Island oysters on the half shell with little sausages. The oysters were so fresh they tasted like my tears. I closed my eyes to feel the sensation of the sea.
Larry chatted about wine with the server, chose something French, and started telling me about novels he’d enjoyed recently. He knew better than to ask how I was feeling.
After the oysters came a fish and shellfish soup, with a delicate broth of fennel and leeks. The flavors were so subtle and perfectly balanced that my mind had to close off everything else to rest on my taste buds. There was no room in my consciousness for heartbreak, divorce, and having to move out of my house, only space for a soup whose flavors shimmered like gold.
The server poured a dark-hued Bandol wine, ripe and inviting. The flavors spread across my mouth into a smile. The main course arrived, an earthy grilled duck breast